Peregrine Faust
"In 2165 the small, newly established human colony of Euterpe was raided by slavers. There were no survivors left on the planet, and many were likely held captive and sold. Most of the former colonists' whereabouts are still unknown." Peregrine Faust, birth name Penelope Casteel, is a tried and true Spacer. She took up bounty hunting (officially sanctioned by C-Sec) at the age of eighteen and has managed to survive her profession for about eleven years now. She's not very well known, and she doesn't make a lot of money, but when she takes a job you can be pretty damn sure she'll get it done... mostly because she's not going to take the job if she thinks she can't do it. She's currently working on hunting down all the surviving old members of the Bleeding Raptors. It's unknown where she came from. All official records of her stop before she turned sixteen. Her birth name isn't actually on record either, but she keeps it close to her heart and listens for it carefully in case someone unpleasant happens to recognize her. She has a bad habit of making bad puns and, occasionally, she will headbutt someone who's pissed her off. Chalk it up to being raised by a krogan. Overview Peregrine stands at an underwhelming 5'2, a fact that often leads to people not taking her very seriously as a bounty hunter. She makes up for it a little bit with her stocky build, making it clear that she at least has some muscle and meat on her bones. Though, at first glance, it's mostly meat. She weighs in at approximately ~180 lbs. Naturally a brunette, she's been dying her hair purple for a few years. It started out as a way of making it harder to recognize her (after a few close calls with someone she knew as a child), but eventually it turned into more of a hobby. It's cut short, her bangs parting to the right and the rest of it fluffed up to stand on end. Her skin is of a medium brown tone. She has three piercings in each ear: one small black hoop, one black ball, and one black cross. Her left eye is a light blue, and her (cybernetic) right eye is a slightly darker shade of blue. She has a scar going through her left eyebrow, preventing any hair from growing back there. Her nose is rather small and broad and turns up at the end, and she has freckles just about everywhere on her body except her legs and torso. There are two scars cutting across her lips, remnants of a fight with a turian from a few years ago. On each thigh is a black tattoo resembling three claw marks, a memento she had done of her days with Bukar and Faust. The left tattoo bears three real claw marks straight through it, a gift from a varren she'd been hoping to tame. At the surface, Peregrine is a pleasant enough person. She's plenty capable of being charming, though most often she chooses to be bluntly honest. If she doesn't think the other person's opinion of her matters, she's known to be a bit of a troll. Her sense of humor is fairly typical for a former merc: dry and a little morbid. More unique to her, she's fond of word play. Deeper down, she's become as aloof as the original Faust was to her. She's not quite as calm and cool-headed as she wants people to think. She doesn't trust anyone with her true self, and she's frightened of commitment, platonic or romantic. Whenever she finds herself becoming truly close to someone, she does her best to push them away and stop interacting with them. Her reasoning is this: If they're someone like her, with a job that could get them killed, she doesn't wish to grow close and lose them. If they're not like her, and are actually a decent person, she figures they deserve better than her. She actually enjoys violence and has quite the temper, though she keeps it tightly leashed, and though she doesn't think of herself as a bad person she certainly doesn't think she's been as good as she could possibly be. She's working on trusting herself and other people more now, but it's unknown how long it will take. She's still reluctant to really become friendly with anyone new. The only person she's fully honest with is Vaius, and even then she's determined to hide her feelings for him. History Prologue The bounty hunter had an... interesting... childhood. Orphaned at age three (by what, she was never told), a passing group of mercs called the Bleeding Raptors (mercs aren't known for their creativity) took pity on her and took her in. More than half of the group thought she was a waste of time, of course, but the leader, a krogan named Bukar, insisted on keeping her. His second-in-command, a human man named Faust, was less than enthusiastic, but nonetheless he helped raise the girl, teaching her all the things she needed to pass as a normal human. Others would occasionally pitch in over the years, but it was Bukar and Faust that spent the most time with her. Bukar regarded her as his own, knowing he'd never have any biological children. Faust, meanwhile, remained cold and aloof. For the longest time, little Penny thought he only took care of her as a favor to his partner. But as she grew up, trouble was brewing in the group. Bukar did his best to keep it from her, but she began to notice the hateful glares he would get when he was with her. The other mercs believed he'd gone soft, and slowly the Bleeding Raptors splintered into two factions-- the ones who supported Bukar, and the ones who would rather see him dead. Somewhere along the way, Bukar lost track of what his detractors were actually capable of. He didn't think of them as a threat. They put up with it for a long time, but when Bukar spoke of officially initiating her into their company on her sixteenth birthday, they snapped. They planned retaliation, and in the middle of the night began a coup d'état, taking out all of his supporters one by one. There was more of them, so it wasn't exactly difficult. By the time word reached Bukar, Faust, and Penny, it was too late for the three to escape together. Bukar ordered Faust to take her to safety as he handed a datapad over to Penny. With no time to explain, the krogan and the girl tearfully said goodbye, and Faust had to drag her away while Bukar bought them the time they needed to flee. It wasn't enough. The remains of the Bleeding Raptors caught up with them just before they could get on their escape shuttle. Before she even knew what was happening, Faust had shoved her inside. He knew they wouldn't bother chasing her, because it was him they'd come for anyway. She didn't want to go, but she knew it would be pointless if she tried to protect him and was killed for it, so she drove off. As soon as she got to safety, she pulled out the mysterious datapad and attempted to scour it for information, but it was heavily encrypted, and she no longer had Faust to decrypt it for her. At a loss, she spent several months hitchhiking to the Citadel, alternating between nearly starving and nearly freezing due to her lack of funds. When she finally did arrive, she was taken into custody for stealing food, but as it was her first offense she was given little more than a warning. For a long time, she didn't know what to do with herself. She joined another merc company despite her young age under the quickly improvised name Peregrine Faust, but the thought of getting close to anyone else terrified her. The problem escalated until, upon seeing that C-Sec was accepting new bounty hunter applicants, she decided to change career paths. She acquired her bounty hunting license at the age of eighteen. Working solo suited her just fine. That's been her life for eleven years now. Act One All of that relative peace (and in Peregrine's opinion, boredom) was ruined when Peregrine provoked a krogan who said he was looking for Penny Casteel. The remaining Bleeding Raptors became all too aware she's still alive under a pseudonym, and so she enlisted the aid of forum user Southpaw to hack into the datapad. There she found proof of every criminal activity the Bleeding Raptors had ever partaken in before the coup, and after C-Sec investigated, it was enough to put bounties on the head of just about every old member of the company. An asari named Malara Noria, a former companion of Bukar's, discovered this and flew into a rage, nearly killing Peregrine in her own home. The only thing that stopped her was the arrival of a C-Sec officer investigating the source of the disturbance. The asari escaped but sustained injuries, and was taken into C-Sec custody. Unfortunately, she still found a way to escape in the end. While in the hospital, Peregrine was visited by the officer who happened upon the scene, an old friend by the name of Vaius Phonius. Though they stopped talking more than seven years ago, they reluctantly rekindled their friendship. This led to Peregrine opening up to other members of the forum as well, as she gradually began to realize she did not have to work alone. Not long afterwards, an assassin was sent to her home to kill her, and she narrowly survived the encounter. For a while, she stayed at Vaius's place while searching for a new place to live. She threatened to out the assassin if she was not given the name of the person who hired her. The threat worked, and Peregrine began to search for her next target, a turian named Vesta Laia. She was given the opportunity to capture the turian when forum user Whiteout. requested aid in acquiring certain toolsets. During her fight with Vesta, Peregrine's right eye was gouged out by her claws. She still managed to bring her bounty in, but she spent the next few weeks recovering, and while doing so she not only moved to a new apartment , but was informed of the whereabouts of Malara Noria. Soon, forum user Jcb112 offered to fund her prosthetic surgery , and so Peregrine received a cybernetic eye on Earth. After two weeks in the hospital recovering, she returned to the Citadel. From there, she was asked to pretend to be Vaius's fake girlfriend in front of his family so they would stop bothering him to try dating again. The meeting with his family went rather poorly, and afterwards Peregrine did not speak face-to-face with Vaius for several days. She went to Cartagena in order to find Malara Noria, and while the capture was successful, Malara forced an unpleasant revelation on her: Bukar did not "adopt her", but instead stole her from her family (who were kidnapped from a human colony and on their way to the slave market), killing her father right in front of her. She was so young at the time that it took an asari melding with her mind to dig the memory back up. Distraught, she once more returned to the Citadel, the traumatic memory having fully resurfaced and proven itself persistent. Vaius talked her down from her depression, and once it became apparent they couldn't ignore their feelings for each other anymore, Peregrine finally confessed. Their first official date was put off until her hands had healed well enough for her to use utensils without fumbling them. (Four down, eight to go) Thread Tracker/Stories * Offsite Story One * Birds of a feather [Extranet] * Ugh. [The Citadel] * Names for a varren [Extranet] * Gotta Knock a Little Harder [Solo] * Revelations [The Citadel] * hospitals SUCK [Extranet] * Broken Bones and Promises [The Citadel] * Offsite Story Two * The worst book I have ever read [Extranet] * Happy Hour [The Citadel] * Well it could have gone worse. [Extranet] * Minor Inconveniences [The Citadel] * Alright, CDN, I've got a question... [Extranet] * Help me pick a sweater for Peanut Butter. [Extranet] * What color is my hair? [Extranet] * I'm currently babysitting an asari kid. [Extranet] * I Swear There's a Joke Like This [The Citadel] * What a Mess This Is [The Citadel] * Lonely Hunter [The Citadel] * @ the person who tried to kill me [Extranet] * "eye" could use some help [Extranet] * the cat is in my fucking walls [Extranet] * With Virtue of a Giving Spirit [Earth] * hospitals STILL suck [Extranet] * So I did an interview. [Extranet] * I need someone on Cartagena for a job. [Extranet] * Shame Thread [Extranet] * The Abyss 1: Stare Into the Abyss [Cartagena] * What do you wear to dates? [Extranet] Relationships The Bleeding Raptors: Since the coup, they've become more aggressive and unnecessarily cruel, but they've also become more efficient. Maybe they weren't entirely wrong when they said Bukar had grown too soft. Now, with most of their older members on the run from the law, they've disbanded. Most of them likely hold a sizable grudge against Peregrine for turning them in, and she's begun the process of attempting to locate them so she can get them before they get her. Tavrak Bukar (deceased): As krogan go, Bukar was pretty stereotypical. He loved a good fight and a good drink, sometimes at the same time. He used his massive size to his advantage in combat and in personal situations. Outside of battle, he was boisterous and loud, bordering on obnoxious. But he was also fiercely loyal to his friends and incredibly protective of the girl he'd decided to take in. Peregrine loved him like a father, and she still misses him dearly. He never told Peregrine his clan name, but after three sleepless nights full of extranet searches, she finally figured it out for herself. He hails from Clan Tavrak, who drove him out with their homophobic tendencies. He spent several centuries wandering the galaxy before finally meeting Reynard Faust, forming the Bleeding Raptors with him. Reynard Faust (deceased): Faust was Bukar's second-in-command, and he'd been with him since the very beginning. A tech genius, Faust often spent more time behind the scenes than Bukar, but when the time came he could definitely hold his own in a fight. He spent a lot of time educating Peregrine, and as such he is the reason she can now read and write as well as she does. While he often did not seem to care for her, in truth he loved Peregrine as much as Bukar did and gave his life for her safety. He was a former Alliance soldier, who eventually became a school teacher and then a mercenary. Peregrine does not know his real name. Malara Noria: The asari, once a trusted friend of Bukar and Faust, recently tried to beat Peregrine to a pulp in her own home. A C-Sec officer showed up before she could finish the job, and Malara escaped. Peregrine recently brought her in, but not without paying a heavy price. Vaius Phonius: Once upon a time, Vaius and Peregrine were friends, despite their obvious differences. He was a rookie in C-Sec, and she was a rookie Bounty Hunter. They didn't know each other long, but despite Peregrine's various hesitations, they grew close. However, due to an incident on Omega, they drifted apart. Vaius is an Enforcer in the Wards now, and he was the one who stopped Malara Noria from killing Peregrine (though he didn't really do very much other than show up). They reconnected at Huerta after the incident. They are now officially dating. Vesta Laia: Expecting that Peregrine would find her sooner or later, Vesta sent an assassin after Peregrine. She failed, however, and afterwards Peregrine found her on Omega and managed to bring her in. Not without losing an eye in the process, though. Quartz: As the aforementioned assassin, the two are on somewhat... rocky... terms. Octis Kurius and Afiyi Maos: Two similar-minded forum-goers she accidentally-on-purpose befriended. She still struggles with the idea of having friends (with Vaius, it came more naturally, as they'd already been friends before) but she tries to keep in contact. While Afiyi and Peregrine have a more mild-tempered relationship, Peregrine and Octis often find themselves arguing. Sheha'Foss nar Maagro: Because he's been staying with Octis and Afiyi for a while, Peregrine and Sheha have crossed paths several times. They've developed something of a jock-and-nerd type of dynamic. Miscellany * Has adopted a varren and named it Agriculture, due to the results of this thread. He's adorable. * Also has a sphinx cat named Peanut Butter. * Has an official playlist located here. * Is demisexual, which is something she's gradually realizing. * Is an excellent cook. * C-Sec offices are her least favorite place to fight. * Has her old eye in a jar of preservation fluid. It's gross. * Likely has undiagnosed ADHD. __FORCETOC__ Category:Forum Dwellers Category:Humans Category:Bounty hunters